Pivotal announced this morning that it has been acquired by Oak Investment Partners and will subsequently be merged with Talisma, a provider of e-service solutions. The parties anticipate that the transaction will close in November or December of 2003.
Oak Investment Partners has agreed to pay $1.78 for each outstanding share of Pivotal, and the company will then become a privately held entity, according to Bo Manning, Pivotal's president and CEO.
"This merger will help Pivotal to do two things, improve our strategic position and increase our long-term financial stability," Manning says. "It will also help us reach our objective through the increased company scale from 400 to 700 employees, a broadened and enhanced product line, and the security of a strategic financial backer we have in Oak Investment Partners."
Manning notes that both Pivotal and Talisma's executive management teams will remain in place, and that the primary brand name will be Pivotal, as Talisma's functions will gradually be integrated into Pivotal's product.
The merger will allow Pivotal to better compete in a broader CRM arena, according to Manning. "We have always gone after general CRM projects, as well as sales force automation deals, but for anything e-service oriented we just could not compete," he says. "Now we have that capability."
Adds Talisma CEO Dan Vetras, "With the combined capabilities we truly believe there is no one in the broad CRM space that has so many working pieces of the puzzle." Vetras will assume the position of COO of the combined companies following the completion of the merger.
According to Manning, the companies will have an integrated product on the market by the second half of 2004. "The great near-term opportunity is for Pivotal to sell e-service solutions to its 1,600 customer base, and for Talisma to sell CRM to its base of 400 customers," Manning says.
In addition to the product synergies created by the merger, Manning notes that both companies have been focusing on India for research and development and will generate significant cost-savings for customers through the Indian efforts as well.

"We will be able to offer dramatically lower implementation costs for CRM projects by driving as much work as possible offshore to Canada and India; fortunately, Talisma has been going down that same road as well," Manning says.